The purpose of this blog is to provide analytical commentary on formal and informal labour organisations and their attempts to resist ever more brutal forms of exploitation in today’s neo-liberal, global capitalism.

Sunday, 18 December 2016

How the West came to Rule? Challenging Eurocentrism.

The notion of uneven and combined
development (U&CD), introduced by Leon Trotsky in his assessment of the
Russian political economy and the possibilities of transformation toward
communism in the early 20th century, has gained increasing attention
within International Relations. In this blog post, I want to engage critically
with the recent book How The West Came To Rule (Pluto Press,
2015) by Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nişancioğlu, which draws extensively on
U&CD in its analysis of the emergence and spread of capitalism.

The
international dimension of capitalist expansion: key contributions.

This is a highly important contribution
to the burgeoning literature on U&CD, which makes at least four key
contributions. First, while many discussions have often remained within the
purely abstract, the two authors provide a fascinating empirical analysis of
the history of capitalism by drawing on the underlying dynamics of U&CD.

Second, the book is exemplary in its
focus on the international dimension of capitalism. All too often the spread of
capitalism is purely understood as a European phenomenon, driven by Europe’s
internal dynamics. Anievas and Nişancioğlu convincingly demonstrate how it was,
for example, the opportunities offered by the Atlantic expansion post-1492,
which ensured the success of British capitalism. Similarly, Dutch capitalism
may have collapsed, had it not been able to draw on labour reserves in East
Asia.

Third, the book reasserts the brutal
force of capitalist expansion in gaining dominance at the international level
including slavery and violent subjugation by military force. Ultimately, it was
the superior military power fuelled by the possibilities of the industrial
revolution, which ensured Western, and here especially British dominance. This
is nowhere more visible than in the British colonisation of India. ‘In 1750,
India produced approximately 25 per cent of the world’s manufacturing output.
By 1800 India’s share had already dropped to less than a fifth, by 1860 to less
than a tenth, and by 1880 to under 3 per cent. It is therefore no stretch of
the imagination to claim that Britain’s industrial ascent was to a large degree
predicated on India’s forced deindustrialisation’ (P.262).

Finally, the book clarifies that capitalism
itself is not an ideal abstraction, but always a mixture of different labour
regimes. Hence, when reflecting on the emergence of capitalism, ‘a distinction
must be made between “capital” and “capitalism”. While capital … refers to a
social relation defined by the relation between capital and wage-labour,
capitalism refers to a broader configuration (or totality) of social relations
oriented around the systematic reproduction of the capital relation, but
irreducible – either historically or logically – to the capital relation
itself’ (P.218). Hence, the fact that wage labour may have existed earlier and
elsewhere in itself does not imply that capitalism as a mode of production had
been established outside Europe.

Challenging
Eurocentrism

The main purpose of the book is a
challenge to Eurocentrism. Thus, it examines ‘the “extra-European” geopolitical
conditions and forms of agency conducive to capitalism’s emergence as a
distinctive mode of production over the longue durée’ (PP.5-6)’. It is this
challenge, with which I want to engage critically in more detail. For this
purpose, I distinguish between a strong challenge to Eurocentrism and a weak
challenge to Eurocentrism. And while I agree that the authors have been
successful in relation to the latter, I will argue that they failed as far as
the former is concerned.

Strong
challenge to Eurocentrism:

In its strong
challenge to Eurocentrism, the authors ‘argue that the origins and history of
capitalism can only be properly understood in international or geopolitical
terms, and that this very “internationality” is constitutive of capitalism as a
historical mode of production’ (P.2). In other words, the very emergence of
capitalism is understood as having been conditioned by developments outside
Europe. Capitalism, is defined by the authors ‘as encompassing historically specific
configurations of social relations and processes’ (P.8). And while they
critically engage with the work of Robert Brenner and other ‘political
Marxists’ for overlooking the potential amalgamation of different modes of
production within a social formation (PP.30-1), ultimately their definition
very much follows Brenner’s understanding of the social relations of capitalism
as being based on wage labour and the private ownership of the means of
production.

In Chapter 3,
Anievas and Nişancioğlu argue that the Mongol empire impacted on the emergence
of capitalism in Europe in two distinctive ways. First, the Mongols disrupted
Asian and here especially Chinese development while ensuring long distance
trade routes from Asia to Europe. Second, it was the Mongol advances into the
West, which brought with it the plague, empowering in turn the peasantry in
European class struggles with the nobility against the background of widespread
depopulation. Clearly, long distance trade routes implied wealth. Nevertheless,
this wealth resulted from the trade in goods, which were produced in feudal
social relations of production. Hence, wealth on its own cannot be related to
capitalism, defined as a social relation by the authors. The plague was crucial
for class struggles empowering peasants across Europe. Nevertheless, the link
with the Mongols, even if they did bring the plague, is spurious, as it would
simply have been a freak, outside impact. Moreover, the question still remains
of why capitalism emerged in England, rather than France or Spain, which had
equally suffered from the plague.

The impact of
the Ottoman empire on the emergence of capitalism is assessed in Chapter 4.
Both authors correctly argue that the rise of the Ottoman empire interrupted
trade routes through the Mediterranean with the East, pushing Europe towards
looking for alternatives around Africa (Portugal) and across the Atlantic
(Spain). Moreover, the external threat had significant impact on power
struggles between European powers, with England being left on its own on the
periphery as a precondition for the rise of capitalism. In response, if new
trade routes had been decisive for the emergence of capitalism, then it should
have emerged in Spain and Portugal. Moreover, considering that the authors
later in the book claim that capitalism emerged in England and the Low
Countries, then the isolation of England cannot have been a determining factor,
as the Low Countries had been for most of the time at the very heart of
inter-European power rivalry.

Chapter 5, in
turn, discusses the discovery of the Americas and its impact on the emergence
of capitalism. The authors assert, again correctly in my view, that a definition
of us versus them, the advanced civilisations of Europe against the
civilisations in the backward stage of nature, sets the stage for Eurocentrism.
Equally, the conquest of the Americas and their carving up into distinctive
territories with clear borders was crucial for the emergence of the inter-state
system in Europe itself. Nevertheless, this too has not caused the emergence of
capitalism. As Teschke (2003) and Lacher (2006) have
demonstrated, the formation of absolutist states and a European inter-state
system came first, the emergence of capitalism occurred later.

In sum, of
course, developments in feudal Europe were influenced through the interaction
with developments and powers outside Europe. The way European feudalism was
shaped, we can argue, was conditioned by developments elsewhere. In itself,
however, these interactions did not result in the emergence of capitalism as
defined by the authors themselves.

Weak
challenge to Eurocentrism:

It is their Brennerian definition of
capitalism, introduced above, which ultimately prevents them from mounting a
strong challenge against Eurocentrism. At the beginning of the book, the
authors ‘insist that something unique did happen in Europe that propelled it to
global dominance at the expense of non-European societies’ (P.10). Hence, the
origins of capitalism have to be rooted within Europe. The way capitalism
expanded outward, however, was heavily influenced and shaped by developments
elsewhere and especially the way non-Europeans responded to this outward
expansion.

Anievas and Nişancioğlu have provided
important examples in this respect. First, Europe benefitted from the Atlantic
expansion following Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the Americas in 1492. ‘If it were
not for the specifically international conditions created by Europe’s expansion
into the Atlantic, it is likely that capitalism would have been choked off by
the limits of English agrarian capitalism’ (P.152). The American colonies
provided both markets for surpluses, which could not be sold in Britain, as
well as super-profits resulting from plantations based on slave labour for
re-investment into the industrial revolution. ‘In the late 18th
century, income from colonial properties in the Americas was equal to
approximately 50 per cent of British gross investment. Since much of this would
have been reinvested in British industries, it provided a significant input
into British industrialisation’ (P.164). In other words, the full establishment
of the capitalist mode of production was conditioned by the opportunities
afforded through the Atlantic expansion. ‘The formation of “free” wage-labour
and the real subsumption of labour under capital – that is, the “maturation” of
capitalism as a mode of production – in Britain was driven by and dependent on
slave labour in the Americas’ (P.169).

A second example is the expansion of
Dutch capitalism. In the late 16th century, Dutch agriculture was
increasingly characterized by large farms worked by wage labour. ‘Crucially,
one outcome of this process was an increase in the demand for labour-power
concomitant with a reduction in its supply in the 17th century, as
population growth could not keep pace with economic growth’ (P.226). Unlike in
Britain, this bottleneck was not overcome through rapid technological
innovation. Instead, Dutch capitalism drew on the availability of labour power
in Asia in its expansion. ‘By incorporating labour-power on a global scale,
Dutch capital acquired a power of expansion it hitherto did not possess’ (P.227).
Importantly, rather than occupying territory and levying taxes as feudalist
Spain and Portugal did in Latin America, Dutch capitalism focused on
controlling production processes. ‘Dutch preponderance rested on intervening
and eventually establishing control over production and thus also labour-power.
The integration of intra-Asian trade, therefore, facilitated for the first time
the organization of “a hierarchy of capitals connecting a dispersed mass of
labour-power” on a “global” scale’ (P.234). Resistance by local people was
again crucial in the way this process played out. In order to get a foothold in
South Asia, Dutch capitalism either integrated into existing networks or relied
on blistering violence. At times surplus labour was provided for free as in the
case of clove production in Moluccas, for example, while rebellions against
clove production elsewhere were suppressed with brutal force.

Clearly, outward capitalist expansion
and the full development of capitalism in Britain and Holland was conditioned
by the opportunities offered in the Americas and East Asia. Nevertheless, the
fact that it was Britain and Holland, rather than Spain or Portugal, where
capitalism was first fully established, indicates that the prior
reconfiguration of the social relations of production around wage labour and
the private ownership of the means of production in these two countries was
crucial for their ability to absorb the opportunities offered in other areas of
the world. As the authors conclude, ‘those countries where protocapitalist
relations were emerging or had already emerged – Holland and England – made
much more productive use of the bullion than did Spain, which was set on a
course of empire-expanding geopolitical accumulation congruent with its feudal
relations of production’ (P.248).

In short, the emergence of capitalism is
a European phenomenon, but one which was conditioned by opportunities and
resistance it encountered elsewhere in its outward expansion. It is this weaker
form of challenge to Eurocentrism by Anievas and Nişancioğlu, with which I am
in full agreement.

This post was first published on the Progress in Political Economy blog on 4 October 2016 as part of a broader Symposium critically engaging with How the West came to Rule. The book received the 2016 Book Prize by the International Political Economy Group of the British International Studies Association.